Marrit Steenbergen will be one of the European swimmers from whom most will be expected when the three-leg World Aquatics Swimming World Cup starts in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku tomorrow and finishes on Saturday (October 3).
The 26-year-old Dutch athlete, who retained her world 100m freestyle title last year before setting a world record of 51.68 in June and then winning a second European title in August, looks ready to carry her long course form on to telling effect in short course competition.
She won five medals during last year’s World Cup in the United States and Canada before winning six golds at the European Aquatics Short Course Championships in Lublin, where she set a 100m European record of 50.42.
Steenbergen’s compatriot Caspar Corbeau is another European world record holder seeking to make a mark in the three legs of this year’s Silk Road Tour, which has subsequent stops at Tashkent in Uzbekistan from October 8 to 10 and at Astana in Kazakhstan from October 15 to 17.
A Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallist in the 200m breaststroke, Corbeau became the first swimmer to break two minutes in the short course version of that event last October, clocking a world record of 1:59.52 at the Toronto stop of the World Cup.
Corbeau earned European 200m breaststroke silver in Paris last month and heads to Baku as one of the leading athletes in his signature event.
While the ripples still spread from the remarkable long course 200m breaststroke world record of 2:04.83 set on September 24 by Japan’s 17-year-old Shin Ohashi, the short course world record holder will be focusing on the new prize offered at this World Cup, namely wild card entry to December’s World Aquatics Short Course Championships in Beijing for athletes finishing in the overall top three in the finals of an individual event with an A-standard time at any of the three stops.
There will be an overall prize pool of $1.2 million.
Other leading European performers involved in this year’s World Cup include Belgium’s 21-year-old Roos Vanotterdijk, who won 100m butterfly silver and 50m butterfly bronze at last year’s World Championships and successfully defended her European 100m butterfly title in Paris.
Meanwhile Poland’s 34-year-old Katarzyna Wasick will be seeking to maintain her unbeaten record in the 50m freestyle at the last two World Cup series. The US-based athlete won European short course gold in her home country last December before securing a first European long course title last month.
Another top performer at last month’s EA Championships will be present in the form of Ireland’s Ellen Walshe, who won 200m and 400m individual medley golds in Paris.
Meanwhile another Dutch swimmer, Tes Schouten – the Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallist and 2024 World Champion in the 200m breaststroke – is back in the thick of it after overcoming health issues that saw her hospitalised for 11 days with “nerve pain, loss of power and function on the entire left side of her body” in November 2024.
Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
